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Targa’s confirmed 2015 dates — check them out now

13 November, 2014

Targa New Zealand has announced the first details of their 2015 events, following the unprecedented interest in the successful 20th anniversary Targa event in the South Island completed on November 2.  

The first is a one-day Targa Sprint on March 7, followed by a three-day Targa Bambina held between May 15 and 17, and the 21st Targa New Zealand event will be held between October 26 and 31.

Though all three will be in the North Island, the success of the organization’s first foray into the South Island this year means a return in the future is a distinct possibility.

“The feedback from competitors to councils would certainly encourage us to head back down south at some stage,” says Targa event director Peter Martin. With such positive feedback, he says it was important to announce the 2015 event dates as soon as possible.

Martin has also been upfront this year by listing separately the medical levy every competitor has to pay.

“The safety of our competitors is of utmost importance to us — and wherever we go, St John goes. This incurs a cost, which we have listed separately this year to make sure everyone knows exactly what it is.” There is now just the one common fee across all three competition classes.

 

Lunch with … Cary Taylor

11 September, 2024

Many years ago — in June 1995 to be more precise — I was being wowed with yet another terrific tale from Geoff Manning who had worked spanners on all types of racing cars. We were chatting at Bruce McLaren Intermediate school on the 25th anniversary of the death of the extraordinary Kiwi for whom the school was named. Geoff, who had been part of Ford’s Le Mans programme in the ’60s, and also Graham Hill’s chief mechanic — clearly realising that he had me in the palm of his hand — offered a piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten: “If you want the really good stories, talk to the mechanics.”
Without doubt the top mechanics, those involved in the highest echelons of motor racing, have stories galore — after all, they had relationships with their drivers so intimate that, to quote Geoff all those years ago, “Mechanics know what really happened.”

ROTARY CHIC

6 September, 2024

Kerry Bowman readily describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Citroën fan and a keen Citroën Car Club member. His Auckland home holds some of the chic French cars and many parts. He has also owned a number of examples of the marque as daily drivers, but he now drives a Birotor GS. They are rare, even in France, and this is a car which was not supposed to see the light of day outside France’s borders, yet somehow this one escaped the buyback to be one of the few survivors out in the world.
It’s a special car Kerry first saw while overseas in the ’70s, indulging an interest sparked early on by his father’s keenness for Citroëns back home in Tauranga. He was keen to see one ‘in the flesh’.
“I got interested in this Birotor when I bought a GS in Paris in 1972. I got in contact with Citroën Cars in Slough, and they got me an invitation to the Earls Court Motor Show where they had the first Birotor prototype on display. I said to a guy on the stand, ‘I’d like one of these,’ and he said I wouldn’t be allowed to get one. Citroën were building them for their own market to test them, and they were only left-hand drive.”